Trying to understand the conquest of the Aztec Empire entails penetrating one of the most fabulous and sad episodes of the history of mankind. It is well known that the Spaniards, led by Hernan Cortes, conquered the Aztecs; the most powerful civilization of Mesoamerica. However, there are many questions regarding the actual events. For instance: how did Hernan Cortes communicate with the Aztecs? Was Moctezuma responsible for the conquest? Was Hernan Cortes a hero or a villain? The Conquest...

Trying to understand the conquest of the Aztec Empire entails penetrating one of the most fabulous and sad episodes of the history of mankind. It is well known that the Spaniards, led by Hernan Cortes, conquered the Aztecs; the most powerful civilization of Mesoamerica. However, there are many questions regarding the actual events. For instance: how did Hernan Cortes communicate with the Aztecs? Was Moctezuma responsible for the conquest? Was Hernan Cortes a hero or a villain? The Conquest...

This enthralling study which examines the impact of the Spaniards upon the Aztec and Inca worlds is dominated by the personalities involved, in particular Cortes and Montezuma. Their confrontation in the Aztec lake-city of Tenochtitlan is a moving drama of human conflict revealing the dilemma and the enigma of the Indians. It is a story of battles and voyages, full of strange episodes – Cortes burning his ships, Pizarro drawing a line with his sword, saying "Gentlemen, this line represents...

With startling speed, Spanish conquistadors invaded hundreds of Native American kingdoms, took over the mighty empires of the Aztecs and Incas, and initiated an unprecedented redistribution of the world's resources and balance of power. They changed the course of history, but the myth they established was even stranger than their real achievements. This Very Short Introduction deploys the latest scholarship to shatter and replace the traditional narrative. Chapters explore New World civili...

From a Bancroft Prize-winning historian, the gripping tale of a shipwrecked Spaniard who walked across America in the sixteenth century.**“Once you start this book, it's nearly impossible to put it down.” -**Washington PostIn 1527, a mission set out from Spain to colonize Florida. But the expedition went horribly wrong: Delayed by a hurricane and knocked off course by a colossal error of navigation, the mission quickly became a des...

A premier volume in Oxford's Pivotal Moments in World History series, Americanos offers an engagingly written, compact history of the Latin American wars of independence. Proceeding almost cinematically, scene by vivid scene, John Charles Chasteen introduces the reader to lead players, basic concepts, key events, and dominant trends, braided together in a single, taut narrative. He vividly depicts the individuals and events of those tumultuous years, capturing the gathering forces for inde...

The Spaniard of the fifteenth century is recognizable by well-defined traits: he was primitive, he was proud, he was devout, and he was romantic. His primitiveness we detect in his relish for blood and suffering; his pride in his austerity and exclusiveness; his devoutness in his mystical exaltation of the Church; and his romanticism in his passion for adventure.After printing had spread in Spain, the romanticism of the Spaniard—to confine our observations for the present to that tr...

Establishing Francisco Pizarro firmly as a man of his time, Stuart Stirling shows that there was little difference in moral terms between Elizabeth I's political expediency in ordering Mary Queen of Scots's execution and Pizarro's killing of the Inca Atahualpa - a deed for which his name has been regarded with infamy.

This fantastic book, filled with amazing facts and photographs, describes what life was like for the Incas. It gives an in-depth account of all aspects of life and people of the time - including sections about emperors, cities, religion, gods, everyday life and many more. The 'All About' series is an educational collection of books from P S Quick, and is targeted to interest 7 to 11 year olds - but will fascinate readers of all ages. At the end of each book there is a quiz section for the ...

The Inca civilization of Peru was one of the gratest of the ancient civilizations of the Americas. Famous for their massive temples and fortresses built from huge blocks of stone and decorated with sheets of pure gold, the Incas also developed a system of government, capable of holding a vast area of territory together, and an extensive system of roads, connecting administrative centres, which acted as a means of colonization. Their religion of human sacrifice, worshipping Inti, the Sun Go...

Dazzled by the sight of the vast treasure of gold and silver being unloaded at Seville’s docks in 1537, a teenaged Pedro de Cieza de León vowed to join the Spanish effort in the New World, become an explorer, and write what would become the earliest historical account of the conquest of Peru. Available for the first time in English, this history of Peru is based largely on interviews with Cieza’s conquistador compatriates, as well as with Indian informants knowledgeable of the Incan past.

The first serious biography of Francisco Solano López in English for decades, this richly researched book tells the dramatic story of Paraguay's most notorious ruler. Despite the heroic stature he gained after his death, López was a monumentally flawed leader who made the disastrous decisions in 1864 and 1865 to invade Paraguay's powerful neighbors, Brazil and Argentina, initiating the most devastating interstate conflict in South American history. Drawing on a trove of primary sources, Ja...